Grand Jury: Speed up property tax refunds

SAN DIEGO —— County tax collectors have $6.2 million more in
overpaid property taxes than previously reported and inadequate
written policies to pay that money back, a county grand jury report
stated Wednesday.

The same report, however, commended Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan
McAllister for immediately starting an aggressive plan to repay
$2.39 million in overpaid property taxes in August, when the grand
jury told his office that it was concerned about the refunds.

In August, without acknowledging the grand jury investigation,
McAllister said the county had discovered it still had $2.39
million in overpaid property taxes from 1996-02. He said his office
would immediately push to refund the money to more than 11,000
taxpayers, in part by posting lists of unclaimed tax refunds and
taxpayers' names on the county Web site and in the treasurer-tax
collector's office.

On Wednesday, McAllister said his office was barred from talking
about the grand jury report until its release.

McAllister also said in a news conference Wednesday that since
August, his office had refunded $1.03 million of the $2.39 million
to 4,127 taxpayers. The conference was called to respond to the
grand jury report.

The report, meanwhile, stated that the county had an additional
$6.2 million in overpaid property taxes that should also be
refunded, collected from 2003-05.

That means that the combined $8.59 million in overpaid taxes
from 1996-05 that must be refunded makes up less than three
one-hundredths of 1 percent of the property taxes collected over
that time.

The office also manages $4 billion worth of investments for
agencies, including the county's 43 school districts.

McAllister said his office intends to refund the $6.2 million as
well, but did not include it when it unveiled the August refund
campaign because the cash was not in danger of being confiscated by
the county.

The county can transfer overpaid property taxes into the
county's general fund if the money goes unclaimed for four years.
The $6.2 million would not be eligible for such a move until 2007
at the earliest, unlike the $2.39 million.

McAllister and the grand jury report said the county hasn't
transferred any overpaid taxes into its general fund since
1998.

McAllister, meanwhile, said he may include the $6.2 million in
the county's aggressive refund campaign.

"That's absolutely our priority right now —— we're going to make
sure that we get every person every last dime they're owed,"
McAllister said.

In its harshest criticism, the grand jury report said
McAllister's office still did not have good written policies on how
to deal with refunds even though a 2003 audit warned about the
problem.

Jim Vlassis, the grand jury's foreman, said in a telephone
interview Wednesday: "You have a responsibility to do a better job
of returning that money … and your policies don't reflect it."

Vlassis said some of the people who were owed refunds were
recognizable names and should have been easy to find, but were
overlooked by the tax collection process.

"There are some high-profile people that have money on here," he
said. "(San Diego City Attorney) Mike Aguirre, (former San Diego
Councilwoman) Valerie Stalling, Food for Less, Lawrence Welk
Resort. The county needs to find a better way of finding folks,
including using the telephone book."

Vlassis said, "There weren't any refunds in the works until we
met with (McAllister) and suggested that it was necessary."

McAllister, meanwhile, praised the grand jury's report.

"All credit where credit is due," McAllister said. "They gave us
another set of eyes looking at this with their inquiries."

He said his office would follow its recommendations —— including
completing new written refund policies —— by the end of the
year.

The report also recommended that McAllister's office try to
speed up the reimbursement process and revise supplemental tax
bills to highlight overpaid taxes that should be refunded to
individual taxpayers who are owed them.

But McAllister also said he thought his office had done a good
job in its effort to find property owners who didn't know they were
due refunds and get their money back to them.